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Light/Breezes

Monday, May 14, 2018

The Kilauea volcano is impressive, even from the International Space Station. Astronaut Drew Feustel posted this shot over the weekend.

Kilauea had a profound impact on me.

The frame above is called a "skylight." It is an opening burned into the surface of the earth by the molten lava flowing below the surface. It radiates an intense heat. Anything too close melts, immediately. I needed to protect my camera lens and I could feel the soles of my hiking boots begin to get mushy.

This photo taken by G.E. Ulrich of the USGS is the Pua'O'o crater in June 1983 shortly after it began to erupt.

I shot this from David Okita's helicopter as we flew over Pua'O'o in 2001. I was producing a documentary for Discovery. USGS Volcano expert Donald Swanson and I were flown to the lip of the crater and stood staring down into the caldera.

On this July day in 2001 the Pua' O'o crater was the gas and sulfur belching center of a crumbling mountain. We needed to pay particular attention to where we were as fissures and cracks cross hatched the rim where we stood looking down into this cauldron of earth. It resembled a pile of rocks or debris perhaps, but it was a furnace of sorts.

Here are notes I made

David
Okita then lifted Don Swanson, Chris and I to the north rim of Pu’u ‘o’o, one
of the worlds newest mountains.Pua’o’o’
is about 18 years old and was created when Kilauea began erupting. We stood on
the north rim looking down into the crater.From a distance the crater emits huge clouds of vapor.We stood on a narrow precipice looking into
the source of the vapor clouds which had been visible from miles away. The
caldera was an engine of vents for steam and for sulfur dioxide.The steam blew like a white cloud, while the
toxic sulfur dioxide leaked as a bluish or gray vapor. When the wind blew from
our back it would clear the crater and Don and I clicked away, shooting pits,
remnants of a fountain cone, and various volcano aftermath. A sound would rise
out of the depths, sounding like surf crashing or wind blowing.After one particularly loud surf sound, Don
said “Oh,” with a sense of real wonder “Oh.” He then radioed to the observatory
and asked if the seismic data had recorded a gas piston tremor.He explained the sound was gas escaping from
below the cap, escaping in a major way. The Piston tremor was a kind of earthquake and the ground vibrated beneath us."

One of those tremors roared like a jet engine and everything in my world shook. The acrid dark sulfur smoke enveloped us, my throat hurt, it was difficult to breath, and I felt sickly. I understood in that instant that planet earth is still creating itself with a force unlike any thing of human scale. I radioed for David to bring the chopper back to base of the mountain and Donald and I trekked down to rejoin my crew mate Chris who wanted nothing to do with standing on the edge of a live Volcano.

Later I learned the tremor was equal to a strong earthquake.

Above gas chemist Tamar Ellis works on one of the fumarole vent fields where gas and steam leak from the earth. BTW, Tamar gave Donald and me the "what for" treatment when she learned we had gone up to the rim without respirators. The inside of my nose felt the affect of the gas leaks for many weeks afterward.

We hiked one evening across old lava fields to a place where we could watch the hot material flow into the Pacific.

This is an act of creating earth. As it cools, it adds a new bench of earth to the island. It is how the Hawaiian islands have grown into existence. Earth, giving birth.

The USGS captured this image of lava moving across the road, just a few days ago.

Kilauea has erupted many times in its history, but this current eruption began in 1983 and is the longest volcano eruption in history. In the last couple of weeks it has become even more active and is claiming more land with lava that will eventually cool to look like the frame below.

Journalism, reporting and documentary production has provided a life of adventure and fascination. Many things have touched me. When I stood at the edge of the Kilauea Volcano I was humbled and stunned by how this old mother earth of ours is still baking itself, still growing and lives. Solid ground or terra firma have less credibility with me.

Our helicopter pilot David Okita is an Hawaiian, a life long surfer and a most mellow gentleman, one of the most relaxed people I've had the privilege of knowing. David is forever fascinated by the volcanoes and offers a simple but wise truism, "The land is alive!"If you are interested in volcanoes or the "ring of fire"you may wish to link here to an account of flying to and climbing on Alaskan volcanoes, also an assignment for the Discovery Channel networks.

Thursday, May 10, 2018

Our state flower springs from an unlikely spot, but it will be revered despite that. We are partial to the California Poppy.

the changing atmosphere

Something about the Gina Haspel nomination to the CIA deserves pondering. There is something else out there.

And there was something out there over the Pacific. The drive north on Highway 1 was accompanied by the bank of marine fog, waiting off shore. The light was crisp and the atmosphere was clear, but it is the time of year when heat on the other side of the Santa Lucia Mountains, in the Paso Robles region draws the ocean cooled hair through the Templeton Gap, bringing the blessing of fog and atmosphere to our coastal village.

The bank creates a breeze. A careful look at the photo below reveals the small white caps pushed by the wind.

The line of clouds below line up behind the marine fog and sock in the back bay of Los Osos and Baywood. Morro Bay also disappears in the gray.

clearing the fog

It's not unlike some of the fog surrounding the nomination of Gina Haspel to be director of CIA. There is a reality that should not be occluded.

I tend toward a view that contradicts the opinion of people I respect, including journalists, politicians and thoughtful analysts.

Gina Haspel is an institutional person. She is a veteran of the CIA and that is important. Former directors, deputies, chiefs of stations, and many other professionals in the security and intelligence community endorse her. This is particularly important at this time, given who the President is and remembering his war on and disregard for the intelligence services.

It is fresh before our eyes, the devastation this administration has wreaked on the US Department of State. An outsider, non professional, abetted by inexperienced political appointees disrupted or destroyed an agency that is vital not only to our security, but to keeping peace in the world. We dare not permit such wanton recklessness with the intelligence community.

greater concerns

I understand the aversion to torture and agree it should not be the policy of the US. The role of Haspel and the agency under George W. Bush was vetted by the White House, and it was a directive of that administration. It was rolled back by the Obama White House and the practices were roundly condemned. There are divergent views as to that sort of interrogation and it's effectiveness.

The CIA was doing what was considered necessary in the war against specific terrorist groups. Haspel should not be sacrificed on the altar of past wrongs, and especially not now.

While this administration with its reactive, inexperienced and non professional wobbling remains in a position to do harm and be ignorant, the director of the CIA should be a safeguard if not foil. It is good Haspel is there or we could see another politico or hatchet man nominated. Frankly we are lucky a CIA vet has been tapped to replace a short timer from the political side of Washington.

Haspel is an institutional survivor, widely experienced, tough, smart and has been in the labor of the citizens of the US for decades. She is smarter than the President, has more real world experience, more courage, a more studied background and has given more of her life to service.

Given the past 30 years of her life and work compared to that of the President, I'd give her the conch shell*.

(*As in the symbols of order and civilization in William Golding's Lord of the Flies)

It's a crazy world, getting crazier and having in charge a veteran who knows about the beasts and evils of the world is assuring.

Thursday, May 3, 2018

There was a time we had hair (as in courage). We, the corporate we; a generation, media, people with ideas and vision.

We make note it was 50 years ago this April when Hair opened on Broadway. Lana and I saw the London performance a year later. A few scenes follow below, but first notes about how time has been unkind to the passions of conviction that mid wifed the birth of Hair the musical.

the woman with the curly hair and the stiletto mouth

I agree with Matt Taibbi's take in Rolling Stone on Michelle Wolf's performance at the White House Correspondents dinner. She said nothing more gross than what the current President has said, except she spoke truth as well as rapier wit.

A few years ago several serious journalists and their organizations thought it was unseemly to mix and mingle in the smarmy climes of lobbyists and lawmakers and the press swilling champagne, seeing and being seen and watching the power tables.

We need a moment of historical clarification. The role of the media as the Fourth Estate of the American Republic is be a watch dog and monitor. It is by nature a cautious and adversarial relationship. There was a time when being friends with those you cover as a reporter was either out of bounds or were relationships that you built carefully and with ground rules.

After Wolf did what she does, we witnessed the absurdity of some of these privileged A list alleged journalists criticize the jokes, the jokester and come to the aid of a faux "victim." Some of these folks are the very ones to whom the obfuscation, prevarication, and political hackery is directed.

The ballroom at the Hilton is as much about careerism, ego, social Darwinism, and pretense as it is about saluting young journalists, giving scholarships and roasting the current regime.

When I did my tour as President of one of the nation's oldest press clubs I wrestled with the philosophic issues that came with the job. Years before our club had been opened to non press, including government employees and lobbyists. They helped pay the bills and as nature divined it, the club was a place where a lot of off the record, background as well as observation occurred. But we had ground rules.

Full disclosure, over a career I became friends with some of those I covered. I played basketball with a governor, dined with other politicians, hosted spies, feds, and enjoyed adult beverages with any number of apparatchik. But we had ground rules. One of the guys called it "drunk back ground denial," a term of art more than fact. They knew that someday I might be after them. I knew that someday they might deny me information. We knew we could eventually take aim at each other. It was a tight rope walk, but a reality.

One of the people who was most critical of Michelle Wolf is a person who was a romantic partner of a national security advisor, and who eventually married a chairman of the Fed. Good for them and no doubt there were advances on inside information, but for heavens sake don't apologize for a comic taking her professional shots at a woman who has lied, for her boss, another known liar.

Taibbi speculates that Wolfe hit too close to home when she told the alleged journalists in the room they made Trump into the monster he became and now they are advancing their careers, selling books, newspapers and television shows because of him.

Back in our day our Gridiron scholarship fundraiser featured a gag newscast-real fake news. The senior anchors and producers of the television stations would spend weeks writing phony and funny news stories, manipulating video tape and being outrageous. Yes, we were in the same kind of clime with the politicians and the beautiful people but we delivered sarcastic, lampooning and withering ammo, that could be devastating, though appropriate, and got laughs. I can't recall any of our press corp apologizing to the governors, senators, congressmen, lobbyists, basketball coaches or state office holders. It was all about the jokes. But it was a different time.

There were no trigger alarms, or micro aggression alerts. But mostly there were no sacred cows and just maybe there was a greater dedication to craft and job and not so much obsession with celebrity.

One of the things some of the people who voted for the current President said they disliked was the elitist, insulated, privilege of "Washington." Well, the current regime has no shortage of privileged wealthy, some of whom have been caught taking advantage of the public coffers, so don't you think the press, there to be a watchdog, should be more like a Michelle Wolf junkyard dog than a lap dog, or pussycat?

The Washington Monument will not fall, and the Republic will not dissolve if the Correspondents Dinner and the faux celebrity show it has become, were to change or go away.

it takes hair

Eventual media giant Robert Stigwood was a mere 33 when he got behind the convention shattering musical playing the Shaftesbury.

Hair created a stir and evoked lots of reaction. The nudity, sound of the music, lyrics, the frenetic energy and the story were non traditional.

Most of the casts, in the US and in London, were young.We saw Tim Curry, #26 in his earlier personhood. Some of you may remember him from the later Rocky Picture Horror Show.

The moon may have been in the Seventh House, and Jupiter may have aligned with Mars, when peace would guide the planets and love would steer the stars. But in 1968 the dawning of the Age of Aquarius had some other heavy players.

Hair opened on Broadway just a couple of weeks after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed. It was six weeks later that Bobby Kennedy was killed. It was a couple of months before the Chicago Police Department went on a riotous, rampage beating people at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. It was at a time the Viet Nam war was killing thousands. It was the year Richard Nixon was elected President.

That bold raucous, controversial, convention shattering Tribal Love Rock musical seems so innocent and 50 years later just as hopeful-

Wednesday, April 25, 2018

The Bundle of Sticks

A certain Father had a family of Sons, who were forever quarreling among themselves. No words he could say did the least good, so he cast about in his mind for some very striking example that should make them see that discord would lead them to misfortune.

One day when the quarreling had been much more violent than usual and each of the Sons was moping in a surly manner, he asked one of them to bring him a bundle of sticks. Then handing the bundle to each of his Sons in turn he told them to try to break it. But although each one tried his best, none was able to do so.

The Father then untied the bundle and gave the sticks to his Sons to break one by one. This they did very easily.

"My Sons," said the Father, "do you not see how certain it is that if you agree with each other and help each other, it will be impossible for your enemies to injure you? But if you are divided among yourselves, you will be no stronger than a single stick in that bundle."

In unity is strength.

The Bullocks and the Lion

A lion had been watching three Bullocks feeding in an open field. He had tried to attack them several times but they had kept together, and helped each to drive him off.The Lion had little hope of eating them, for he was no match for three strong Bullocks with their sharp horns and hoofs. But he could not keep away from that field, for it is hard to resist watching a good meal, even when there is little chance of getting it.

Then one day the Bullocks had a quarrel, and when the hungry Lion came to look at them and lick his chops as he was accustomed to do, he found them in separate corners of the field, as far away from one another as they could get.

It was now an easy matter for the Lion to attack them one at a time, and this he proceeded to do with the greatest satisfaction and relish. In unity is strength.

a second source

"And if a kingdom be divided against itself that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house be divided against itself, it cannot stand."

Mark 3:24-25

the American original

John Dickinson, one of the founding fathers, known as the "Penman of the Revolution" published the Liberty Song in July of 1768 in the Boston Gazette. It contained the lyrics "Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all! By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall!"

There is your line. From sometime around 600 BCE, the time of the Aesop fables, to 30-70 AD when Mark was written and to 1768 is the perseveration of a message. That admonition may be more important to these United States now than at anytime since the Civil War.

Too many politicians and clamorers are anything but civil to those who do not share their mindset. Loud mouths and low information abound. Reason seems to be arrested. People do not leave their own information silo, they feed on only what they agree with. Rare are those who challenge themselves. Lies and junk get passed, even if fabricated by Russians, spread by bots or spewed by loonies and extremists. Hate and deception are political currency. Wouldn't this be a good time pay heed to the wisdom?What if House and Senate party leaders shared the reading of the fables?

Sunday, April 15, 2018

It's a trick we never tire of. And it is a heady tonic; new life, rebirth, an élan vital for those deepest chambers of who we are. Spring reminds me.

It makes us look,

creates intrigues,

and broods.

Ben, my late friend, producer and television business partner joked that after college he wanted to open an office in Manhattan and sell words and lines.

Please allow me to offer you a new line....

sight lines

Here are some visual lines that deserve a well done!

(some tricky window washing required here)

Oh yea! Ice cream done this way.

Nature or nurtured, spring brings hope. BTW, does anybody know what is the tree with these pods?

they deserve the best

Among those to whom we can take such a question is a teacher. I'm one of those who think teachers are among the very most important people in our culture. I also think we should be ashamed at the economic dislocation between the crucial role players they are in shaping a future, and what we pay them.

Pay inequity is a disease in the body politic, a symbol of a social code or set of values that is wrong and dangerous.

I read a note to her mother by a teacher who has participated in the protests and demonstrations in Oklahoma. She spends her own money to help feed her students and to provide the support material they need to learn. She is grossly underpaid to begin with. They sacrificed further to take the message to the street and to the state government.

I spent enough time reading city and county budgets, school board budgets, state budgets, federal budgets and all manner of analysis and accountability studies to know there is always a way to pay public servants more than what they are paid.

In a philosophical finish I question whether any corporate ceo, cfo, coo, or board member is worth their salary, really! I'm more confident saying what they do is not more important than shaping the intellect of a child. The discrepancies between what we expect of teachers and what we pay them has to end, even if it means a radical restructuring of our current way of doing public business, which is obviously broken.

As a post script-my resume includes being a president/ceo, an occupant of the corner office. CEO salaries are like pay of professional athletes. You might be able to make a "justification" given an organizations income but it's still absurdly inflated. That is never more true than compared to what we pay teachers, fire fighters, cops, health department workers, etc, etc.

Monday, April 9, 2018

There is a lot to like about Santa Barbara's funk zone, not the least of which is building art.

A more extensive look follows, but first, the old goats respond. The Rap back--

**The Text below**

Frequent readers may recall in the previous post I discussed how our old goats coffee dialectic/cafe debate, populated by a diverse group, was at least civil unlike the wide divergence almost every where else you look these days.

None of the group seemed to take offense to my characterizations, however Ray, our resident historian responded with verse. BTW Ray has offered up other ditties showing that he could make a run at song writing as a twilight career.

I see the group would prefer to be known as the Illuminati instead of old goats. My only retort is a small edit. He noted that my court skills were unknown at Butler U (I was accepted there) but it should read Ball State U, from whence I graduated. He's right though. My hoops skills were left for Industrial, Church and Y leagues.

Thanks Ray, and Illuminati pals. This is a keepsake the kids will find in my files.

the funk

Santa Barbara's "Funk Zone," between the Pacific, the 101 and adjacent to the Amtrak station is a warren of cafes, wine rooms, galleries, restaurants, boutiques, bistros and plenty to look at.

An old warehouse and industrial district, enlivened.

These 8 x 8 portraits are of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Frida Kahlo, Yauyoi Kusama, Diego Rivera, Ai Wei Wei. They were done by students and guest muralist David Flores.

And then near the Santa Barbara farmers market is another eye appealing bit of public art, on a private home.

After living in the mid-west my one regret about California is the brevity of the green season. So, enjoy a couple more scenes from nearby.